Two Pommie Sheilas: Brits need to learn true perils of a WA winter

Its time to embrace the Perth winter despite the British heatwave, say our Two Pommie Sheilas.

Whenever I call my family back home at this time of year, the chirpy tones at the other end of the line are a sign all is not right.

Gone is the doom and gloom, the countdown until their next all-inclusive getaway and the weekly list of who’s died and who’s been burgled.

Instead, they’re almost singing when, under the influence of a bottle and a half of Prosecco, they ask “come on, what temperature is it over there?”

Alas, it is indeed “cracking the flags” back home and we Poms abroad will be told about how “tantastic” it is quicker than Aldi sells out of disposable barbecues.

Aussie Poms, I too feel your pain and I think it’s about time we reminded our friends in the heatwave heaven just how terrible we’re finding it once the mercury drops below 20 degrees Celsius in Perth.

First of all, there’s the beaches. My goodness, we only get to go a few times a month nowadays and we don’t have nearly as much traffic on the way there as you do (you’re talking a good 15 minutes or so). Not to mention all the white sand we have to tolerate all year round, it’s not a patch on Whitby’s pebbles.

Our coats are massively underutilised. The wool-blend number I forked out a small fortune for at Debenhams barely gets out of the wardrobe here. Just six weeks later, it’ll be mothballed in favour of t-shirts again. And don’t even mention the constant to-ing and fro-ing between boots and sandals.

And of course, on those days it does drop, we’re having to warm our insides with wine. We have some of the world’s best wineries to try out, so many that we’ll never get through them all. We’ll never make it to France at this rate.

To top it all off, we have rainbows to add to the list of weather displays we have to look upwards for. Our necks are hurting from all those times looking upwards at the blue skies.

I don’t know how we’re coping.

And in case you were wondering, it’s 19C.

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